She agreed to check up on some of the airparks we shared with her and recently she sent us the following information about Telford:

“The AirPark at Telford never got off the ground. It was subject to a public enquiry and planning was denied even though every residential plot was spoken for and the industrial units too. Funnily one of the Directors is now my flight instructor – she’s excellent. Just passed my Air Law and hopefully 1st solo soon.”

The article noted that taxes on a piece of real estate – home, airpark, etc., nationwide averaged around 1% of the property’s assessed value.

That got me to thinking and I checked my own home tax assessment and talked to several other people both locally and in distant places and discovered this was a good rule of thumb. It is always important to check out the tax load on the place you are considering purchasing, but you can probably use this bit of data for early figuring.

Of course, I will look forward to hearing from those who deal with this type of material all the time telling us whether r not this is a valid rule of thumb.

“In this country, the Mackenzie District Council subdivided 33 sections on land next to Pukaki Airport in 2008, which returned more than $1.5 million.”

Located 60 miles south of Jackson Hole, Afton Municipal Airport’s (AFO) 7,023-f00t runway can accommodate most piston and turbine aircraft. Afton AirPark features dedicated taxiways, providing access to each of the 54 lots and hangars, and is serviced by Afton Flight Services FBO. Homeowners can arrange for fuel services directly to their homesite hangars. The property is unique in the fact there are no private hangars available at the Jackson Hole airport where tie down costs can run $250 to $750 per day, Burke said.

The auction, which will be at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts at 240 S Glenwood Street, will be broadcast live on RFDTV starting at 2 p.m. on May 15 with telephone bidding available for pre-registered bidders.

Most flyin communities are private – owned and private – use but a significant number have been established over the years on property adjacent to public-owned and public-use airports. These residential airparks have provided financial support, security and even helped FBOs with their business.

Unfortunately, the FAA has taken a ridiculous stand against residential airparks at public-owned airports. The result has been threats to restrict grants for airport improvements and demands for repayment of past grants. The FAA has demanded that TTF (through the fence) agreements be canceled, causing property owners to suffer financial loss as they tried to sell a home.Under fire from the flying community, the FAA issued Airport Compliance Manual Order 5190.6b, prohibiting TTF access.

Under the leadership of Brent Blue, the residential airpark community has fought back. He has been outspoken in his attempts to get this silly piece of FAA rule reversed, especially since it was published without any input from the aviation community at all. And, using Freedom of Information requests as well as your responses to questions we published in General Aviation News and Living With Your Plane, Blue found that the FAA’s supposed reasons for the rule were completely without merit. None of the claims of the FAA were supported by their own records.

Now, the Community Airport Access and Protection Act of 2010 has been introduced in the House by Representative Sam Graves (R-Missouri) and Leonard Boswell (D-Iowa). Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), has introduced the legislation in the Senate.

I encourage you to contact your Congressional delegations and encourage their support for this legislation and I want to express my personal thanks to Blue for his untiring efforts.

APRIL 2 UPDATE FROM BRENT BLUE: The Senate amendment did not make it to the appropriations bill which recently passed.  Congressman Graves’ office has not let us know when their bill will be coming up.  I will let everyone know as soon as I know.